M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta – Prominent human rights groups lashed out Wednesday at a statement from the military intelligence agency chief, which accused them of fomenting separatist movements in the country.
Indonesian human rights monitor Imparsial and the National Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) slammed a statement made in August by Strategic Intelligence Agency (Bais) chief Maj. Gen. Syafril Armen.
They said Syafril's claim that the two groups, along with the Papua-based Human Rights Study and Advocacy Group (Elsham), had given financial and political support to separatist movements was baseless.
"We want the chief of Bais to retract the statement as it was a baseless and arguably stupid statement based on old data collected by the agency," Imparsial executive director Rachland Nashidik said.
Rachland said the accusation indicated that little had changed in the agency. He said the statement harked back to methods used by the authoritarian New Order regime to intimidate opposition groups into silence.
Imparsial gave the Bais chief a week to retract the statement and make an apology, or said it would file a lawsuit against the agency.
At a seminar organized by the Defense Ministry in late August, Syafril delivered a speech titled "Perceptions about Internal and Transnational Threats", in which he grouped Imparsial, Kontras and Elsham under the banner of "other radical groups", which continuously attacked government policies.
Syafril said the three rights groups received financial support from foreign agencies, which they used to encourage separatist movements in the country. In the speech, Syafril identified two other potential threats to the country's stability – resurgent communist groups and radical Muslim organizations in favor of implementing sharia law.
Separately, Usman Hamid of Kontras said the Bais chief as the head of an internal institution in the Indonesian Military (TNI) should not have issued such a statement because this could be construed as meddling in civilian affairs.
"Bais is an institution that has no power to implement policies and only reports to the TNI chief or the Defense Ministry, so why did it not just deliver the report to the two (bodies) concerned," Usman told The Jakarta Post. He challenged Syafril to provide evidence to back up his allegations.
Usman said that to prevent intelligence agencies like Bias from overstepping their authority, the government should draw up a more comprehensive law to regulate them. "Such legislation would put intelligence agencies under the control of both the executive and legislative branches of government and reduce the potential for abuse of power," he said.